Tivo is busted.

It’s been giving us fair warning, acting flaky for weeks. So we scheduled a service call, set for Monday morning. Meanwhile, DirecTV sent us robo calls over the weekend cheerfully advising us that a problem in our area had been fixed — did we still need that call? We checked our recorded shows, and all seemed fine, so we cancelled it.

Then, of course, over the weekend, certain channels wonked out again.

I am not proud of the following exchange I had with the DirecTV customer service person Monday morning. Hoping that it might be possible to uncancel — the appointment, after all, had been scheduled for that very morning — I called.

“I’m calling to reinstate a service call we had scheduled. We thought Tivo was fine, but it’s not. The picture is stil breaking up.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to do a restart.”

“I really don’t want to do that right now — I don’t have time this morning, and I just did that the other day, and it didn’t work. I just would really like to reinstate the service call.”

[Dipping into script protocol:] “I understand that this is frustrating. But the procedure is to restart.”

“Look, I’d really just like you to reinstate the service call. We got a message that there was an issue in our area that had been fixed. But over the weekend, we noticed there are still some channels breaking up. And today we got another message that it’s not working.”

“Can you record a show?”

(I recognize that she is proceeding to Step 1 of the Procedure, which I did a few days ago.)

“I don’t know. I didn’t try it,” I say, irritably brushing off her prompt. [Did you not hear me? That won't work!] And by now my kids are watching “Max and Ruby,” their morning ritual that lets us have-coffee-and-maybe-some-cereal-get-their-clothes-together-clean-up-around-here-and-regain-consciousness.

“Can you tell me what channels they are? Are they national or local?”

(At this point, my pre-coffee patience, a short fuse at best, is exhausted. I can tell that I am not going to get my way, and I am furious, like a child who is not being taken seriously.)

“I’ll have to ask my husband.” Tivo controller I am not, although I’m the one who has to be around for the service call.

I bang the receiver down on its little table — hard — (Take that, recorded for quality control!) and run upstairs, where I then “tell” on this terrible DirecTV service person to my husband — who is clad in towel, razor in hand, wary look in his eyes.

“Can you please help me with this!?”

“How?” (gesturing at semi-nude self.) “Why are you calling them now? Tell them we’ll switch to Comcast and call them back later.”

Still furious, I rush back downstairs and spit through clenched teeth, “I don’t have time for this now. We’ll call you back later.” Slam.

Then I go have a talk with myself in the kitchen about my behavior. Time out.

I was more right than I realized. That night, my husband couldn’t get Tivo to power up at all after going through the whole restart procedure.

Much like trying to communicate with customers service, the fan whirs, but the lights don’t blink.

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Tags:   DirectTV · lousy customer service · Tivo3 Comments